Looped-out chicken

Ahhhh, spring. The season of chook insanity, of broody behaviour, fluffy new life, and a mathematical problem. Population of Chooktopia is set to increase in about 22 days; we have more than enough hens to meet our egg consumption and gifting needs. And definitely more than enough roosters! (we still have one more, "Pretty Boy", than we need -- but he is too pretty to relegate to the oven just yet). And the numbers seem set to rise at an exponential rate.

On Monday we were shocked to discover that Sophie, my favourite chook, had gone missing! Later on the day she showed up clucking and generally just being a looped-out chicken. Tracked her back to her hidden nest (among the bamboo), and discovered a sizable clutch of 14 eggs. Oh great, too late to rescue for the kitchen (a partly-foetus'ed egg -- not a pretty sight). So we let her be. But Sophie's problem is that she is breed-wise related to the battery hen chooks. So whilst she might have discovered her motherly instincts in the glorious spring days, she's not quite all there as a mother. The foodie in her dictates that she hops off the nest much too often, and then once she's off she'll start pecking at little bits on the ground for her not-yet-in-existence chicks!

It has happened once too often so I've just marked all the eggs and transferred them to the main roosting nest (where three other broody chooks have taken up permanent residence).

Oh, fun and games. I'll let you know in a further 22 days or so, what is happening in Chooktopia!

xoxo

A pictorial post

Because I'm as tired now, as Matilda was when this photo was taken, I'll just let a few photos do the talking...

i has been knitting

Finally, my knitting mojo is back!!! I blame the Olympics, perfect knitting weather.

This is what I've been madly into lately:

Gypsy Swallowtail Shawl

Noro Kureyon Sock Yarn
colourway S180A -- turqouise, orange, gold, pink, red, purple
4mm KP Options on 120cm cord

I started this one with no purpose (and indeed, a few other more pressing WIP's) when I came across the Noro Kureyon Sock in my stash. With a cast on of only 4 stitches, Swallowtail seemed irresistable. I hated the feel of the yarn (but I already knew that) but wasn't prepared for the low quality of the entire ball. My first knot came very suddenly, knitting away on the orange and bam a knot into purple. I was shocked into knitting on without trying to fiddle with the colour changes. Which, when continuous, are awesome to watch and knit, they are very gradual.

I actually knit an additional 5 repeats of the Budding Lace, which added 30 rows. Three rows into the Lily of the Valley Lace, I had a panic attack about running out of yarn (I did not did not did not want to fork out good money on more crap yarn -- in the same gaudy colourway no less), and ripped back to the prescribed 14 repeats. Now that I'm done with the Lily of the Valley Lace, I wish I had kept those rows because there is plenty of yarn left. I'm adding an extra Lily repeat, which makes the shawl look lopsided. Not enough "filler" and too much border.

But I'm sure my niece will love it. She turns 9 next month and I hope the bright colours will make her day. Luckily we're in the same city so she can return it for washings.

Well, I am almost done with the shawl now and the ball had a total of eight knots. A couple were OK, turquoise into turquoise for example. Sometimes you could spit-splice long lengths of adjoining colours together if the yarn was thin enough at that point. This is definitely not yarn for the anal knitter! It drove me up the wall a few times but I kept knitting whatever surprise came up. Some of the colour changes were very very strange, I wondered if the yarn was even from the same lot.

I wouldn't use this yarn for socks. Well not socks for me, anyway. I don't mind the hand-washing thing, but I wear my socks and I don't think even with kid-glove treatment they would wear very well. I cringe at the prospect of coming upon a really thin spot on a sole stitch. Never mind all those knots!

Now I'm on a gradual-colour-change kick and am bringing in a small stock of Kauni yarn into Australia! These are jumbo 160-170g balls and I'm so eager to see how the colour changes compare. Not to mention quality. I wanted so badly for Noro to be a great yarn (because it is beautiful to look at!), but it just wasn't good yarn. I have high hopes for the Kauni!

Check out these luscious Kauni projects on Ravelry:
Ravelry -- Kauni projects

Gone: Green and Gold on CASBAH 120g

I've got three skeins left of a special self-striping yarn I created for some Olympic knitting. Dyed on the sinfully luxurious CASBAH (from Hand Maiden). Each "skein" consists of approx 100g self-striping bright Green and Gold, and approx 23g in a solid, darker heritage green to get your socks Heeled and Toe'd. Or your scarf Trimmed or Fringed? I'm knitting finger-up fingerless gloves, elbow length.

The stripes range in width from one to three rows, depending on what you're knitting, of course. I swatched a 48 stitch tube on 3.00mm needles, magic loop (oh Addi LACE how I love thee!):


Dyeing this yarn was, shall we say, a learning experience all the way. I ended up with a large skein (too large for the width of the stripes I was doing). Unwinding it was a nightmare, so the self-striping yarn was handled quite a bit.

Anyway, the sets are $38 including Express Postage. The first three people to email me at irene at jollyjumbuck dot net shall have it.

Yarn details: CASBAH by Hand Maiden 80% Superwash Merino, 10% Cashmere, 10% Nylon28st/10cm over 2.50-3.00mm needles

Countdown five days to the Olympics!

I'm so spoilt...

In terms of the awesome quality time I get to spend with Matilda. She is at the absolute sweetest stage right now, learning new words all the time and constantly chatting away. I even get asked for "kiss" and "cuddle" once in a while. There's a lot of demands to "show me", "open", "close", etc. She's a pretty happy kid; sometimes quick to temper but always quick to get over it (unlike her wayward mum..)

Rather than moping around wishing the rain away today (when I know we need it and the rainwater tank loves it), we went to the pool. She loves to swim and splash around. A little while with her "superman muscles" (arm floaties) and a little time walking around in the shallows.

We feed the chooks, hang around and cook together, and just generally have a lazy old good time. I'm cherishing the time as I know it's not going to last forever.

News on the knitting front:








(ie. NOTHING! I seem to have temporarily lost my knitting mojo. One round into the current sock project (last worked on about three weeks ago) and I just couldn't keep up with the easy pattern!)

I spent the last night and some of today untangling the Olympic mega skein of self-striping yarn. The skein was about 8 metres around. Never, ever again am I going to dye self-striping yarn this way again! There was about 300g worth of Casbah and I was asked more than once, "why are you bothering?" by Roy. And to think I was going to breeze through 15 skeins of this for the July Yarn Collective sock club!

I am going to temporarily re-open the Ozebaby store to list the 3 skeins of Olympic yarn -- it's either that individually disable each and every product (there are about 9 full pages of active products) on jollyjumbuck.net.

Getting on with it.

Right. It has been a rocky couple of months but I'm getting on with it now. We ran into a few problems and there was a point in there where Matilda and I moved out for a bit, but we are back now and working on it. A little more conversation helps greatly. Sometimes I think we are back at square one again but nevertheless I can't stay in this limbo forever.

I'm really sorry for pulling the plug on Jolly Jumbuck so suddenly (and at times gracelessly as I stuffed up the cart so orders were still coming through), but I really did need to focus on getting things back on track domestically. Something had to give and the only thing I could sacrifice wasn't my family, or my health, but my work.

Jolly Jumbuck is going to stay closed for a little while longer while I take this opportunity to do what I have been needing to do for a while now, and that is to transfer over to either osCommerce or Zencart cart. Congo has been fabulous but was always a temporary thing. So that's the Renovations part of it.

In the meantime whenever the muse strikes me I am dyeing up stock. Just a few skeins here and there whenever there is some free time. Matilda is down to one day a week at daycare now so you can imagine I'm not getting that much done.

And the best part, I can now reveal. I have been quietly putting my feelers out for an employee. I just can't keep on doing both the retail and dyeing part -- at least not the way I want to do it. So. the plan is this person will be handling the retail side of things when everything is all set up.

It's not a done deal yet, but my friend Abby (mum to James, three) seems really interested. What it will involve is I label and bring her the skeins, she photographs and lists them and then when orders come it they are filled from her home. So she can work from home and earn some money/computer experience at the same time.

On an unrelated matter, I have three skeins of yarn that needs to be skeined up and listed pronto. It is self-striping "Green and Gold" on Casbah, especially created for the Olympics.

Putting the Mum back in WAHM

A few people have contacted me lately, asking why things were so quiet on the Jolly Jumbuck front. Well, I've been busy behind the scenes doing large dye orders for a couple of places (hopefully I will find some time to catch-up blog about them later on).

But most of all, I've been busy being Mum. Matilda now has two additional days a week with me. My mum has moved away and daycare fees have gone up so that's why the change. We really enjoy spending days together, she's a very "sticky rice baby" and we have a lot of fun. It's a lot more exhausting than anything else though, so by the time she's in bed all I want to do is to knit and relax.

The past week has been quite distressing at night, she is usually a great night sleeper but has been having growing pains or something. Would go to sleep as normal but then wake up an hour or so later and not be able to go back to sleep for hours!

The plan is to do dyeing at night but as I said most days I'm just too exhausted. The new lights in the dye studio makes it a possibility when things settle down though. Right now I'm cancelling the dye-to-orders, and just focusing on dyeing up a stockpile for the occasional stocking. And other behind-the-scenes non retail stuff as well.

So that's a quickie explanation and another post in this dismally-maintained blog!

PS -- my laptop is well and truly dead and I'm too tired to fight for the computer at night so the next stocking won't be till June. I will update the newsletter soon.

PS #2, 5 minutes later: Eeep! Roy has just surprised me by nearly doubling my studio space and finally attaching the sink etc. I was wondering what all that banging was :) Now I really will have to dye more to make use of it! Anyone know where I can stretch time out to 36 hours a day?